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Walliams tops Amazon children's Christmas wishlist
David Walliams’ Bad Dad (HarperCollins) has topped the list of books children would most like to find under the Christmas tree, according to an Amazon UK survey.
The independent research into 1,000 UK children aged between eight and 12 was commissioned to identify the most desired books. Guinness World Records 2018 was the second most popular, followed by Kid Normal (Bloomsbury Children’s) by Greg James and Chris Smith.
Time Travelling with a Hamster by Ross Welford (HarperCollins) and Giraffes Can’t Dance (Orchard Books) by Giles Andreae were also in the top five most desired, while other popular choices included The Witches by Roald Dahl, The Diary of a Wimpy Kid (both published by Puffin), and Hachette’s The Girl with the Lost Smile by Miranda Hart.
The research, conducted by creative agency 4 Media Relations Research in November, found that that two-thirds of kids read just as much as their parents did at their age. The most important thing children looked for in a book was humour – 45% said they wanted it to “make me laugh”. More than a third (37%) said that they would be keen if a “cover is interesting” while 34% wanted a book to let “me use my imagination”. A friend’s recommendation was important to a third of the surveyed children (33%) while 27% went for titles with pictures.
When asked what they like most about receiving books at Christmas time, nearly half the children surveyed (45%) said it was just because they “love to read”. Nearly four in 10 young people said it is because “books are entertaining”, while a third (33%) revealed that “reading together with their family” was what they liked most about literary gifts. Two thirds of parents in the survey (66%) claim that their children read the same as they did at the same age.
Amazon invited a children’s reading club, The Chatterbooks, in Hackney, east London, to
Chatterbooks also gave a special shout-out to the book Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World (Hachette) by Rachel Ignotofsky, for showing“how different women changed the way we see the world today, even though a lot of people told them ‘no’.”
Simon Johnson, director of media at Amazon.co.uk, said: “Books have always been a firm favourite on people’s Christmas wish lists through the ages, from hotly anticipated new releases to timeless classics, there is something for everyone in the list that the children recommend this year.”
